Puvis made this small-scale replica after the central panel of a triptych he painted for the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen in 1888–90. The program draws inspiration from the museum’s collection of antiquities and locally produced ceramics and pottery. Here, men excavate classical architectural fragments and women decorate earthenware on the hillside of Bonsecours, a suburb of Rouen. A panoramic view of the city and the Seine River unfolds in the distance. The exhibition of such copies was instrumental in bringing attention to Puvis’s many mural commissions for public buildings in France; this one was first shown in Pittsburgh in 1898.

[Durand-Ruel, Paris, 1895; stock no. 3389; bought from the artist on August 14, for Fr 12,000; sold in October to Durand-Ruel, New York]; [Durand-Ruel, New York, 1895–99; stock no. 1440; sold on February 6, 1899 to Payne]; Colonel Oliver H. Payne, New York (1899–d. 1917); his nephew, Harry Payne Bingham, New York (1917–d. 1955); his widow, Mrs. Harry Payne Bingham, New York (1955–58)

"Recent Loans." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 16 (February 1921), p. 41, mentions that this picture has been lent to the MMA by Harry Payne Bingham.

Camille Mauclair. Puvis de Chavannes. Paris, 1928, p. 162, lists it as in the MMA's collection and calls it a sketch.

Charles Sterling and Margaretta M. Salinger. "XIX Century." French Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2, New York, 1966, p. 230, ill., state that it may be a preparatory study for the Rouen picture; identify the setting as the hillside of Bonsecours, a suburb of Rouen.

Aimée Brown Price. Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. Exh. cat., Van Gogh Museum. Amsterdam, 1994, pp. 213–17, no. 130, ill. (color), calls it a reduced version painted after the completion of the Rouen mural and dates it about 1890–95; comments that the complexity of the composition is more evident in our picture than in the Rouen painting and observes that "the Rouen commission is almost unique among the murals for the introduction of contemporaneity through the figures' clothing".

Nienke Bakker and Maite van Dijk. "Van Gogh in 'The Country of Paintings': An Overview of his Visits to Museums and Exhibitions." Van Gogh's Studio Practice. Brussels, 2013, pp. 75–76, fig. 24 (color), incorrectly identify it as the version exhibited at the Salon de la Société Nationale in 1890 instead of the Rouen picture and note Van Gogh's admiration for Puvis's composition.